Contributors

Contents/Summary

From the theory of capital to the theory of organization (1): economic struggle and political struggle--class struggle

From the theory of capital to the theory of organization (2): the working-class character of organization--the party as factory

Lenin's footsteps from the theory of capital to the theory of organization: annotations

From the theory of organization to the strategy of revolution (1): proletarian independence

From the theory of organization to the strategy of revolution (2): the factory of strategy

From the theory of organization to the strategy of revolution (3): organization toward communism

Lenin's footsteps from the theory of organization to the strategy of revolution: annotations

Insurrection as art and practice of the masses

The Soviets between spontaneity and theory

Lenin and the soviets between 1905 and 1917

The soviets and the Leninist inversion of praxis

The reformist change of praxis: soviets today?

Verifying the question of whether the soviet is an organ of power

The soviet form of masses and the urgency of workers' struggle

Dialectics as the recovered form of Lenin's thought

Lenin reads Hegel

Between philosophy and politics: the weapons of dialectics

The economic foundations of the withering away of the state: introduction to the reading of The state and revolution

"Where to begin?"

The concept of the state in general can and must be destroyed

Opportunist and revolutionary conceptions of the withering-away of the state

The problem of the withering-away of the state: against equality

First approach to a definition of the material bases of the "withering-away": against work, against socialism

Marx's anticipation of the problem of the "withering-away": against the law of value

Toward a problematic view of transition: impossible socialism and the coming communism

On the problem of transition again: the word to the masses

Transition and proletarian dictatorship: the particular interests of the working class

Transition, material basis, and expansiveness of the working class government

A provisional conclusion: Lenin and us

Appendix on "left-wing" communism: a conclusion and a beginning

A difficult balance

A definition of "left-wing" communism and some (adequate?) examples

Toward a new cycle of struggles

From "left-wing communism" to What is to be done?.

Publisher's Summary

Factory of Strategy is the last of Antonio Negri's major political works to be translated into English. Rigorous and accessible, it is both a systematic inquiry into the development of Lenin's thought and an encapsulation of a critical shift in Negri's theoretical trajectory. Lenin is the only prominent politician of the modern era to seriously question the "withering away" and "extinction" of the state, and like Marx, he recognized the link between capitalism and modern sovereignty and the need to destroy capitalism and reconfigure the state. Negri refrains from portraying Lenin as a ferocious dictator enforcing the poor's reappropriation of wealth, nor does he depict him as a mere military tool of a vanguard opposed to the ancien regime. Negri instead champions Leninism's ability to adapt to different working-class compositions in Russia, China, Latin America, and elsewhere. He argues that Lenin developed a new political figure in and beyond modernity and an effective organization capable of absorbing different historical conditions. Negri ultimately urges readers to recognize the universal application of Leninism today and its potential to institutionally -- not anarchically -- dismantle centralized power. (source: Nielsen Book Data)